Guest Post: The UFC’s Meat Packing Plant

The following article is a guest submission from Discord server patron Iggy (@chunguskhan03), an author of editorial and analytical work - as seen on MMASucka.com. Hailing from the Republic of Buryatia, Iggy’s insightful and fiery commentary is always appreciated by our team.

Opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Fight Site staff.

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Henry Cejudo vs Jose Aldo is a travesty.

I’m sure there will be a multitude of editorials written about this topic, telling you why the fight actually makes sense from a demographic standpoint, from the numbers standpoint, from the “My nan loves it” standpoint. They’re all going to be equally terrible.

“Aldo deserves the shot at the Bantamweight title because x, y and z.”

“Cejudo wants this fight to happen because great recognizes great.”

Someone might even throw in an empty platitude and say something like: “Well, he’s the GOAT Featherweight”, without really meaning it or understanding what that means. He beat up some guys a long time ago, I guess. All of it will inevitably turn out to be either sycophantic lies or just inane droning that doesn't make sense and comes out of the mouth of someone who doesn’t care about the sport and doesn't understand what they’re watching.

Henry Cejudo deserves to lose in the most boring fashion in the worst fight of all time for pushing for this joke of a title fight, whilst the UFC matchmakers, and the UFC as an organization by extension, deserve the inevitably awful PPV numbers for trying to matchmake the way Disney test-screens their live-action remakes of classic cartoons.

I’m sorry if this isn’t a technical breakdown of the ways Cejudo rips Old Man Aldo’s face off, or exactly how visceral the murder of Cejudo would have been against Prime Aldo. I just don’t care. I can’t bring myself to care because this is awful. This is shit MMA. And for those of you saying that the UFC has always been shady with their matchmaking, giving title shots to fighters coming off losses, citing Tito vs. Shamrock, Sylvia vs. Couture, or whatever other awful dogshit fight of which there are heaps upon heaps in the UFC’s weird and stupid history — I do not care. This is precisely why I’m so tired of all this.

MMA is a silly sport, and denying this simple fact is not good for your mental health. But the thing is, the UFC would very much like for you to still think of it as a serious organization whilst it continues to make baffling decision after baffling decision. In fact, the UFC behaves almost like an Apparatchik, cultivating doublethink in its’ fans’ minds: respect the brand whilst putting up with all the silly bollocks, or else.

What do I mean by “or else”? Or else what?

Well, the UFC itself doesn’t really have to do anything. The MMA community does a splendid job of ostracizing its own members in lieu of direct action on part of the organization. It’s got MMA analysts whose only ability is to regurgitate Wiki trivia and punch stats, it’s got hack writers ready to jump on whatever bandwagon is trendy at the moment, and label anyone not on board “a Casual”. It’s got fans who believe anything Joe Rogan’s faulty skin machine avatar haphazardly relays from the signal sent by his brain from within its sensory deprivation tank where it’s floating in a state of hyper-aware unconsciousness in CBD-oil infused amniotic fluid. We as fans do a splendid job of acting like unpaid interns for the UFC’s PR department.

The UFC and the MMA community play a dozen little mind games and a dozen little mental tricks that turn this whole show in a wholly anti-fighter affair that, after a close examination, resembles a kangaroo court with dire physical consequences.

You get the vaguely-defined concept of “Championship Rounds” which basically means every popular and well-liked champion starts every round with a 10-9 advantage. You get the “Gotta beat the man to be the man,” implying that even if you absolutely savaged your man within the first fifteen minutes of the fight, the champion somehow earns triple points if he so much as walks forward in the last ten minutes.

The opposite is true if you’re a champion that isn’t a mainstream “draw”, or even a champion that is not popular with the UFC upper management. The UFC basically decides what being a champion even means, and we the fans just keep on enabling this kind of thing. Judging by some of the media campaigns you don’t even have to hold the belt to be treated like a champion, as long as your behaviour gels with someone higher up the ladder.

Let's look into the UFC’s situation as of now.

They’re half a billion into debt, they’re still struggling to find any fighters with star power the likes of Conor McGregor — who is rapidly aging in a truly Irish fashion, i.e. like a decomposing flash clone in a tropey sci-fi novel — and they still can’t for the life of them figure out how to expand their audience. Sure McGregor got a stupid amount of people tuning in for his fights but how many of those actually watch any other cards that don’t involve him? The Jones fans might consider themselves hardcore and as a result buy PPVs with Marcin Tybura on the main card, so that presents a slightly bigger percentage of viewers. But is it enough?

This is where the UFC’s committee thinking comes barging in, bulging out of its ill-fitting suit. We got demographics numbers, people analyzing the PPV numbers, Google Trends, terrible twitter takes from guys with handles like “@ValentinasCoffeeFilterSocks”. Ignoring the reality of the market, sifting through data that only reaffirms the biases of the matchmakers and WME execs. In a truly Web 3.0 fashion, the beast feeds on its own tail, like a shitty Ouroboros made out of turds.

So why Aldo? Why not Yan or Sterling? Or hell, even Dominick Cruz?

Look at the location.

“Gotta get that Brazilian market,” says a suit somewhere in Vegas, losing to Dana White at Yu-Gi-Oh! whilst a naked Bruce Buffer is sitting in a hot-tub, busy adjusting his ab implants so they line up. “Brazilians love seeing their hometown boys get wiped off the face of the Earth, just like their pubic hair.”

I think the reason why this whole thing is just driving me up the wall is that the UFC is just such a corporation. I’ve seen it before in other industries and mediums of entertainment, and I'm seeing this now in a fight promotion of all things. Maybe it’s my naivete eroding after years of following MMA but more and more I’m noticing a designed-by-committee way of thinking: everything feels stale, forced, controlled.

How can a sport where people bash each other's heads in feel that way?

There are several ways you can go about it, if you're an empty, vapid, out-of-touch suit on some executive board:

You dehumanise the fighters by prohibiting them from wearing their own kit, taking away hundreds of thousands of dollars from their pay. Ostensibly to clean up the look of the promotion and create a certain image the viewers can latch on to; in reality all you do is splatter logos all over the Octagon canvas and strip fighters of their sponsor money and hoard it all for yourself. That’s without even getting into the commentary booth being forced to promote cheap hooch while someone’s ribs are being turned into powder. Do you think all the money the UFC gets from all this garbage somehow trickles even a little bit into the fighters’ pockets? Think again.

Then, after you’ve prohibited the fighters from expressing themselves through any means save for awful tattoos and haircuts, you let the rankings and the matchmaking be decided by people who don’t even watch the goddamn thing. 

And finally, you style yourself as the premier fight promotion and let the lack of quality product outside your shit brand prop that claim up.

I mean, what else we got aside from the UFC?

Bellator? Yeah, it has its own niche appeal, I admit; I mean who isn’t interested in seeing Fedor “This is The Last One, I Swear” Emelianenko vs. My “Fat” Grampa III? Seeing Dada 5000 huff, puff and fart his way into a cardiac arrest was the most fun I’ve ever had watching someone almost cash out on live Television.

I mean it was the only time I’ve ever seen that happening but still.

But winning by means of being the only one in the industry not to catastrophically shit your pants on stage is not enough. You gotta hold onto that victory, dammit, by any means necessary. You need to seize control.

Everything in the current UFC is about control: the uniforms, the branding, the listing of the sponsors on live broadcast while a man’s head is being embedded into the canvas. The UFC’s very nature is oxymoronic: a soulless conglomerate that is also a fight promotion.

The UFC's higher-ups ruthlessly exploit the highly individualistic nature of the sport by presenting itself as the Fight Promotion, the MMA Leader, the place where the best fight against the best and cement themselves as the greatest fighters on the planet. This is a lie.

The MMA Leader will bring you in, give you a pair of ugly white underpants, pit you against some other guy in ugly black underpants, encourage you to blast each other into smithereens for some stupid and exploitative “Bonus” that will be given to the card headliners anyway, and then cut you if you show any sign of apprehension about getting punched fifty times in the head in your next fight.

The UFC presents itself as a meritocracy, fools the MMA fan into thinking it’s one, and preys on the MMA fighter’s desire for recognition, fame and fortune. It goes without saying that nearly every fighter thinks he’s gonna be the next big thing; you don’t get to the Olympics by thinking “I think I got a real shot at Bronze!” — and the people who run the UFC understand that.

The big fat lie number one that is being fed to the fighters is that creating a fighters’ association or a union means everyone will be paid equally. Putting aside the fact that even if everyone would have been paid equally the presence of a union still implies that the money will surely be better than whatever peanuts fighters are getting now, so this is simply not true. This lie is concocted to keep fighters playing by the UFC’s rules. You get paid in Walmart coupons unless you deliver action, thus delivering ratings and highlights. If we like you, that is. If we don’t, then you can fuck off and sit in a toll booth five days a week or something — all that in-between trying to learn how to avoid getting your face punched in. Maybe you can deliver pizzas on foot in lieu of roadwork.

Cowboy Cerrone got his head blasted off his shoulders by McGregor and only received a set sum of $200,000 compared to McGregor’s $3,000,000. Once again putting aside the fact that Cerrone is a company man for no good reason, and has been pretty much used as the UFC’s whipping boy to prop up elite talent, the disparity is just fucking insane.

Actually, no, wait, Cerrone is an excellent example of a fighter being duped by the UFC. Let me recount that: Cowboy comes off a hellacious beating from Tony Ferguson followed with having half his brain cells being dispersed into the atmosphere by Justin Gaethje, and then finally gets his face caved in by McGregor for 200k while a disinterested Jon Anik keeps on yammering about a terrible beer that tastes like armadillo piss. It’s the perfect summary of the UFC as a market entity, in my opinion.

Let’s see if we dig up some more examples, shall we?

Max Holloway and Dustin Poirier meet for the second time and demolish each other for 25 minutes virtually non-stop, with almost 300 combined full-power strikes landed between the two fighters. Let me make it perfectly clear: this fight shaved years off these guys’ careers, maybe even their lives. Both Max Holloway and Dustin Poirier went through an absolute grinder in order to finally meet each other again, blown each other to absolute pieces, and sent the viewers into a frenzy, with many widely hailing their insane, balls-to-the-wall performance as the Fight of the Decade.

Dustin Poirier earned $250,000 whilst Max Holloway made $350,000.

Meanwhile Anthony Joshua received in excess of $20 million for getting his block knocked off within six rounds against Andy Ruiz in their first fight.

Am I saying Anthony Joshua shouldn’t have received this much money for getting his brains damn near scrambled? Absolutely not. And to be completely frank, if you think that way, I sincerely hope Andy Ruiz scrambles your brains, as well.

The fact stands that an MMA fighter’s pay is a complete joke compared to most other athletic endeavours, most of them much less dangerous and more popular. There is no nobility in this. This isn’t a point of pride, like the fighters are some sort of Spartan ideal, austere and noble and penniless. The fighters are being swindled. The fighters are meat. They are exploited for our entertainment and the fight promotion couldn’t give less of a toss about their well-being as opposed to how many energy drink companies are ready to slap their grotesque logo on the canvas and have it get splattered with someone’s blood.

UFC 251 will be headlined by Alexander Volkanovski in his first title defense against Max Holloway in an immediate rematch of the fight in which a shell-shocked Holloway lost his belt by being outsmarted and out-hustled by one of the absolute best fighters on the planet. A fight in which I fully expect Volkanovski to brutally and ruthlessly finish Max, and as a result Holloway, hailed by Joe Rogan as the consensus Greatest Featherweight of All Time after soundly defeating the previous consensus Greatest Featherweight of All Time twice, will fade into obscurity within six months. Max Holloway is being ground into dust, and no-one seems to really care. This is where greatness takes you in the UFC. You get turned into ground beef.

Demetrious Johnson, one of the best pure technicians in MMA, a record-setter, a genuine All-Time-Great, showered with disdain for most of his title reign, gets robbed of his belt in a mind-bending decision and gets traded for an overhyped walking meme that college wrestles guys in MMA, as a joke. Then analysts and pundits and fans say he ran to ONE to duck the Cejudo rematch, and then he gets promptly forgotten about.

Jose Aldo, the Great Jose Aldo, beat three generations of some of the best the world has to offer. Jose Aldo, whose skill was so great three entire generations of fighters kept trying and failing to crack the code. The best fighter the UFC has ever had and MMA fans had ever witnessed got promptly knocked off his throne by the UFC’s new media darling by making one silly mistake, and never recovered. Didn’t even get the benefit of a rematch. It’s very telling exactly how much your All-Time-Great status means to the UFC.

The UFC will take your greatness, squeeze out everything you’ve got, suck every penny out of you, use you for everything they can get their hands on, for as long as they can, and then, when you’re a barely breathing husk, dump you into a fight against their new favourite toy.

I’m faced with an uphill battle here, to be quite honest. I struggle to get excited about anything the UFC does these days. This was an awful beginning of the year. From the scummy top-heavy cards otherwise bereft of interesting fights to the destruction of whatever genuine talent they have with their relentless scheduling, the asinine matchmaking, the blatant favouritism towards some fighters and open disdain for others — it just keeps killing my interest in the sport, bit by bit, little by little. Flyweight, a division stacked top-to-bottom with talent, nearly bursting at the seams with it, a survivor of several attempted murders by the UFC brass, still ostracized by both the organization and its fans. Actually compelling matchups being buried on the undercard in favour of debuting Heavyweights whose striking style can only be described as “I really hate bees”.

Genuinely excellent Bantamweight contenders against washed old men shoved in there for name value instead of title eliminators.

Jon Jones loses to a middling Middleweight with no legs and gets the decision because the judges don’t know what they’re watching. Then gets his shit pushed in by a fighter that never went past the fifteen-minute mark for almost the entire fight, still gets the nod, and fans defend it.

Max Holloway, an honest-to-goodness great champion, gets zero time to recover and get his game back in groove, shoved into a rematch where he’ll most likely get sparked for good, after a grueling career full of insane action fights.

Henry Cejudo vs. a mummified Jose Aldo at 135.

I simply do not understand why people keep putting up with this nonsense, and having lost interest in multiple hobbies before getting into combat sports for very similar reasons, I am simply not interested in seeing a repeat of that. I don’t want to see a thrilling young sport get run into the ground by vapid corporate interest. The sport of MMA is barely over thirty, and there’s still plenty of time for fans to make it so that the people who run this circus finally notice a shift in the market. The answer is as always to not give them your money. Don’t encourage them, don’t buy into their promos, don’t believe their narratives and especially don’t believe the pundits with their pro-bono corporate stanning.

Do yourself a favour and just pirate that shit.